Wilderness and Urban Survival Guide
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Environment
Environment
Using a Map and Compass
Parts of a Compass Most compasses have markings similar to these: (1) baseplate, (2) glow in the dark pointer, (3) ruler, (4) needle, (5) orienting lines, (6) direction of travel arrow, (7) index line, (8) declination scale, (9) orienting arrow, (10) housing, (11) dial, (12) scales Baseplate: the hard surface that the compass is mounted…
Clouds as Foretellers of Weather
Clouds: Foretellers of Weather About 200 years ago an Englishman classified clouds according to what they looked like to a person seeing them from the ground. He grouped them into three classes and gave them Latin names: cirrus, cumulus, and stratus. These three names, alone and combined with other Latin words, are still used to…
Signaling Techniques
Signaling Techniques One of your first concerns when you find yourself in a survival situation is to communicate with your friends or allies. Generally, communication is the giving and receiving of information. In a survival situation, you must first get your rescuer’s attention, then second, send a message your rescuer understands. Some attention-getters are man-made…
Water Crossings
Expedient Water Crossings In a survival situation, you may have to cross a water obstacle. It may be in the form of a river, a stream, a lake, a bog, quicksand, quagmire, or muskeg. Even in the desert, flash floods occur, making streams an obstacle. Whatever the obstacle, you need to know how to cross…
Sea Survival
Sea survival is perhaps the most difficult survival situation. Short- or long-term survival depends upon rations, equipment available, and your ingenuity. You must be resourceful to survive. Water covers about 75 percent of the earth’s surface, with about 70 percent being oceans and seas. You can assume that you will sometime cross vast expanses of…
Cold Weather Survival
Introduction to Cold Weather Survival One of the most difficult survival situations is a cold weather scenario. Remember, cold weather is an adversary that can be as dangerous as anything else you can encounter. Every time you venture into the cold, you are pitting yourself against the elements. With a little knowledge of the environment,…
Tropical Survival
Introduction to Tropical Survival Most people think of the tropics as a huge and forbidding tropical rain forest through which every step taken must be hacked out, and where every inch of the way is crawling with danger. Actually, over half of the land in the tropics is cultivated in some way. A knowledge of…
Desert Survival
To survive and evade in arid or desert areas, you must understand and prepare for the environment you will face. You must determine your equipment needs, the tactics you will use, and how the environment will affect you and your tactics. Your survival will depend upon your knowledge of the terrain, basic climatic elements, your…
Other Means of Determining Direction
You can use nature to find your general direction. Moss, puddles, snow melt patterns, even rings in a tree stump, can be used to help you determine your north and south direction of travel. Using Moss and Puddles to Find Direction Using moss on a tree to find direction can work in some cases but…
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